To meet the growing needs for potable water in the Boston metropolitan region, the Massachusetts state legislature ordered the evacuation of the relatively sparsely populated towns of Dana, Enfield, Greenwich, and Prescott, as well as portions of other adjoining towns such as New Salem, to make way for the construction of a massive reservoir. Over the course of almost two decades, the population of the towns was systematically relocated, the houses moved or razed, and bed of the future reservoir was stripped of trees and brush. The last remaining residents of the region were removed in 1938 and the four primary towns were officially disincorporated as the dam was completed and the waters began to rise.

The numbered blueprint sheets and index that make up this collection offer a detailed depiction of the Swift River Valley towns at the time the state government was seizing land for the Quabbin Reservoir. Apparently surveyed between 1932 and 1938, the maps were prepared by the Metropolitan District Commission of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts for a Quabbin Reservoir Real Estate Survey in 1959 and then revised in 1972.

Contributors

Types of material

Massachusetts. Special Commission on the Reorganization of Higher Education Records, 1980

1 box (2 linear feet)

Call no.: MS 125

The Special Commission on the Reorganization of Higher Education was established to investigate and review Massachusetts laws concerning elementary and secondary education. In order to determine the existence and extent of unequal educational opportunity services, the commission reviewed the state’s school systems as well as the educational laws, programs, and school systems of other states.

Consists of records of the Special Commission on the Reorganization of Higher Education Records, including materials relating to the Boston Community Reorganization, a federal finance proposal, lottery distribution, and school finance reform.

Subjects

Education, Higher--Massachusetts

Contributors

Massachusetts. Special Commission on the Reorganization of Higher Education

The Special Commission on the Reorganization of Higher Education was established to investigate and review Massachusetts laws concerning elementary and secondary education. In order to determine the existence and extent of unequal educational opportunity services, the commission reviewed the state’s school systems as well as the educational laws, programs, and school systems of other states.

Consists of records of the Special Commission on the Reorganization of Higher Education Records, including materials relating to the Boston Community Reorganization, a federal finance proposal, lottery distribution, and school finance reform.

On the eve of the Seven Years War in the Province of Massachusetts, town constables shouldered an array of public responsibilities, including announcing town meetings, serving writs for the town clerk, and collecting local taxes. Although they received a commission for the taxes collected, constables were also held personally responsible for any taxes unpaid, authorized by writ of the Provincial Treasurer and enforced by County Sheriffs.

The warrants in this collection, nearly all printed forms completed in manuscript, were issued by the Treasurer and Receiver General of Massachusetts Bay Province, William Foye or his successor Harrison Gray, authorizing the Hampshire County Sheriff, Oliver Partridge, or Deputy Sheriffs Moses Miller or Ephraim Williams, to attach the goods of local constables in arrears: Brimfield, Greenwich, Sheffield, and Westfield, Mass., along with Somers and Suffield, now part of Connecticut. In instances where the taxes were not delivered, the Sheriff was empowered to “levy by Distress and Sale of the Estate real and personal” of the constable to make up the unpaid difference.

Although printing requires a substantial capital investment in equipment before any hope of profitability can be entertained, there have been numerous attempts over the years to set up printing houses in communities with astonishingly small population bases. In even the most remote Massachusetts towns, people like John Metcalf (Wendell), Ezekiel Terry (Palmer), and John and Solomon Howe (Enfield and Greenwich) operated as printers during the nineteenth century, specializing in a quotidian array of broadsides, song sheets, almanacs, toy books, and printed forms, hoping to supplement, or provide, a decent living.

This small, but growing collection consists of materials printed prior to the twentieth century in small Massachusetts towns, defined as towns with populations less than about 2,500. Although few of these houses survived for long, they were important sources for rural communities. Typically simple in typography, design, and binding, even crude, the output of such printers provides an important gauge of the interests and tastes of New England’s smallest and often poorest communities.

Founded in 1987, the Tax Equity Alliance of Massachusetts Initiative (TEAM) was a coalition of government groups, civic and business leaders, human services advocates, unions, and others sharing the conviction that fair taxation and quality services must go hand-in-hand. The collection is limited to their publication, “Talking Tax,” and brochures both for their volunteers and for the public.

Subjects

Collection of travel brochures for camps, inns, hotels, historic sites, and tourist attractions throughout New England. Most brochures advertise accommodations or attractions in a natural setting, including room rentals at farms, hiking in the White Mountains, and the rivers and mountains of Vermont. Women traveling alone are the target audience of some of the brochures, which promise clean accommodations and wholesome activities. Tourist sites in a few states outside of New England are also included: New York State, Washington, D.C., Virginia, and Ontario.

One of the largest building trade unions in the U.S., the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America was established in 1881 by a convention of carpenters’ unions. An early member of the American Federation of Labor, the Brotherhood began as a radical organization, but beginning in the 1930s, were typically aligned with the conservative wing of the labor movement.

The records of the Massachusetts State Council of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America contain reports and other information generated during the union’s annual conventions as well as copies of the constitution and by-laws, handbooks, and histories of the union.

Contributors

United States Works Progress Administration of Massachusetts Water Pollution Surveys Collection, 1936-1938

1 box (0.5 linear feet)

Call no.: MS 068

Under the federal New Deal in the late 1930s, the Works Project Administration authorized a series of surveys of major watersheds to gauge water quality and sources of pollution. In Massachusetts, the studies were coordinated by the Massachusetts Department of Health and resulted in a series of more or less detailed reports issued between September 1936 and January 1938.

The pollution survey collection contains reports for six major watersheds in New England — the Blackstone, Hoosic, Housatonic, Merrimack, Nashua, and Ten Mile — measuring the impact of both civic and industrial waste on regional water resources.